Cornelius J. Jones

Cornelius J. Jones (August 13, 1858 – March 13, 1931) was an African-American attorney, activist and politician who was active in Mississippi, Indian Territory, Oklahoma, and Tennessee between approximately 1880 and 1931. In the 1890s Jones became one of the first African-American attorneys to argue before the United States Supreme Court. Beginning in 1915, he participated in the movement to reclaim revenue from taxes collected on slave-grown cotton during the Civil War for formerly-enslaved cotton workers and their descendants. Working with the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association (MRB&PA), he sued the United States Treasury Department in 1915 in an attempt to access those funds. He served one term in the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1890 and 1891 as a Republican, and twice ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Mississippi's third district. Jones was also a promoter of Chase, Oklahoma, a short-lived attempt to establish an all-black town outside of Muskogee, Oklahoma.